


Star Wars - Ghosts of the Republic

by WhiskeyJack9105



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-17 00:54:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29463114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhiskeyJack9105/pseuds/WhiskeyJack9105
Summary: In the aftermath of the Galactic Empire's defeat, Luke Skywalker and a fledgling New Republic must deal with an old guard of squabbling Imperial Admirals, a resurgent order long since thought extinct, and a disgraced and mutilated bounty hunter out for revenge...
Kudos: 4





	1. Chapter 1

_A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..._

S T A R W A R S

EPISODE X

GHOSTS OF THE REPUBLIC

Victory for the Rebellion! With the defeat of the Galactic Empire at the Battles of Endor and Jakku, and the deaths of the final Sith Lords, the galaxy is undergoing a transition of peace and happiness.

The heroes and leaders of the Alliance to Restore the Republic, including Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa, Han Solo and Chewbacca, now make their way towards the celebration of a New Republic, and the opening peace talks between the lingering Imperial Remnants, led by an old guard of squabbling Admirals. Hope is in the air.

And yet, across the stars, whispers have started of a resurgent order, long since thought extinct, and a disgraced and mutilated bounty hunter out for revenge…


	2. Prologue - Tatooine

The pain was immeasurable, beyond the imagination, and it took him three days to climb out of the Sarlacc’s stomach.

Boba Fett was no stranger to pain, and he was no slave to it either; and yet, the initial digestion of the creature had been nothing he could have ever prepared himself for. Barbed insides tugged at his exposed skin, screeching off his father’s armour but otherwise leaving long trails on his body, and acidic liquids washed over him, melting.

He fought the agony with a surging rage, born out of survival but also of humiliation. How he had ended up here was not something he wanted to be thinking about, and yet the image of a blinded Han Solo, his previous bounty, hitting his jetpack to malfunction was as seared to his mind's eye as his armour was now to his skin. _Dammit._

In the worst times of it, he told himself that he deserved this. For letting his guard down, for letting the thrill of hunting the Jedi override his senses. For years of disgracing the name of his people.

Boba struggled with this while the others around him struggled for their lives. Jabba's minions, the Klatooinians and the Weequays, were all eventually beaten down by the sheer physicality of the Sarlacc's organs. Roped by hungry tendrils of flesh, they screamed and fought in vain, slowly sinking into the foul walls of the creature's body, until they hung defeated and desiccated, weakened but by the whites of their eyes fully aware of what was happening to them.

Thanks to his albeit weathered Beskar armour and his numerous gadgets however, Fett was somewhat luckier. He was able to cut through the grabbing insides with his laser, clear a wide berth around himself with his flamer. He was able to preserve his strength with his malfunctioning jetpack, to move away from the gripping strength with his grapple. When he felt that he had gained enough strength, he had started to climb.

Getting past the horrors of the Sarlacc's stomach had turned out to be the easy part. Alternating between a knife and his damaged jetpack, Boba had found that the Sarlacc had teeth running down its throat from its mouth, each no doubt filled with paralytic venom. He had seen one of the Weequays go stiff as a board upon grazing one of them. And so every time he made a mistake, and one of those things had touched him, he had no choice but to fall. And he fell a lot.

Hitting the bottom of the stomach, he would be once again enwrapped in vines of flesh, once again feel the stomach juices splash on him as he was almost submerged. The blast of his flamer caused it all to wither away, scorched and dying. He would repeat the process of cutting, escaping, building and preserving his strength. And then Boba Fett would climb again.

It had taken him several attempts, and every time he failed he was subjected to those tendrils and that acid. Boba was a fast learner, however, and soon enough he figured out a method.

He used his grapple to hook into the side of the throat, and as he fell unable to move he was still tethered to the last place he had ascended to. In a space where the grasping flesh vines could not reach him, Boba would hang from the grapple, unable to move but aware enough of his surroundings. As he slowly spun on the wire, he looked at the walls of the Sarlaac's stomach, at the poor souls over the years that had been successfully ensnared. Most were but skeletons now, some more recent as Jabba loved to play with his toys, and feeding the Sarlaac was one of his favourite past times.

He thought in a wild moment whether they would try and rescue anyone down here, and chuckled. Well, the thought of chuckling anyway; he was still paralysed. The fact of the matter was that in the business of bounty hunting you made few allies, just those who valued your worth. And it seemed like Boba Fett's worth had dropped to nothing. A greater disgrace than being fed by your own bounty to a Sarlaac he could not imagine.

The grapple had worked for a time. The wire was made of a tough durasteel, and took a long time to dissolve, but eventually the cable had snapped when his weight proved too much, and Boba had slammed particularly hard into the waiting flesh.

After the umpteenth descent he started to look around the cavernous stomach, at Jabba's goons that hung suspended around him. Some were still moaning, others that must have been prior victims given by Jabba were more silent, although Boba had the distinct impression that there was awareness there in those seeming corpses.

The oldest one looked tiny, and must have been no more than a child when it had fallen into the pit. It looked ancient, down here far longer than before Jabba had discovered the Sarlacc. Its skeleton was merged with the flesh of the stomach, and not much was left except a ribcage, the left arm and a skull, gaping and sightless. And still… Boba felt like he could distinguish a flicker of life emanating from the corpse. If he hadn't been in such a predicament the thought would have greatly unnerved him.

His search eventually proved worth it, as he came across one of the Klatooinians, half-submerged and emitting a muffled scream, clutching a long metal prod in a vice-like grip. Prying it loose from the flesh turned out to be next to impossible, and so Boba, muttering a curt apology, went to work with his tools. The screaming of the Klatooinian soon rose to a louder volume, and then was suddenly silenced as Boba ripped the prod free from its scorched and blackened hands.

Now as the tendrils came for him, Boba was able to give them a brief shock, one that seemed to paralyse the Sarlacc momentarily; it began to give a series of frustrated shrieks as it tried and tried in vain to envelop him. Boba retorted now with a renewed vigour, an untapped rage flowing through him as he relentlessly fought the creature, looking for an opening to begin his climb again.

Once he found that opening, although for the briefest of seconds, Boba Fett knelt and pivoted his jetpack to the Sarlacc’s throat. In a delirium he managed to lower the scope on his antenna in front of his visor. When the targeting reticle turned green, he fired.

The rocket flew up the passage of the Sarlacc’s throat and exploded in a fiery ball. The creature gave the most wailing, piercing shriek that Boba had ever heard in his life; it sounded like multiple voices, from the walls of flesh all around him, screaming in unison. As if they all shared the pain of the creature. Boba looked up and saw the light from above streaming down. The sun of Tatooine. The paralytic teeth had been mostly blackened or outright destroyed by the rocket’s blast, and so Boba, readying himself, turned on his jetpack.

It wouldn’t work.

Cursing, Boba tried and tried to ignite the thrusters, but they just fizzed and popped. They were covered in the ooze of the Sarlaac's stomach, and it had done some serious damage. Looking up, he could see the mouth of the Sarlacc starting to close, the bountiful light from above slimming down to a fine point. The tendrils started to rise again, and in a moment of sheer hopelessness Boba could feel them wrapping around him, slowly, sinking him into the stomach. Like coaxing hands, from welcoming strangers.

Boba thought about all his failures, his disgraces to his father’s name. Would it be so bad, to toss the tarnished name of Fett aside? To forget they had ever existed?

Then he tried one last time, and the thrusters suddenly flared. The tendrils started to tighten, but Boba knew he was free. Pushing hard on the throttle, he suddenly blasted from the base of the stomach, into the gratefully freeing air.

The Sarlacc tried to chase him, the vines of flesh grabbing at him as he thundered up through the gaping chasm of its stomach, but they would never catch Boba Fett again.

He came up through the throat, bouncing off the broken and sharpened teeth, feeling his body go numb in places where it cut into his skin, and spread across his body, but Fett paid it no mind.

The jetpack blasted him through the mouth, burning the skin of the creature’s maw and causing it to shriek in pain. He shot up into the desert sky, in his delirium going higher than he had anticipated. In a long arc he began falling, unable to ignite the thruster again which was badly damaged as his body went limp.

He hit a sand dune with a soft thud, and lay there for what felt like years. The sky changed colour above him, the day burned and then was replaced by the freezing night, and again was replaced by the light, and still his body refused to budge.

After a time, he could move his head, and twitched it slightly to the left to get a better view at the destruction below.

Jabba’s barge was a wreck, a ruin of blackened and twisted metal, with some fires still burning here and there. Charred corpses lay strewn across the sand, not so different looking to the many disintegrations he had performed.

Boba knew Jabba was in there somewhere, the fat likely still cooking off the Hutt like some giant slab of meat. If he could get in there, the sustenance would likely keep him fed for a long time…

He drifted in and out of consciousness, dreaming about meat, until a sound awoke him that he knew well.

The Jawa Sandcrawler came over the hill, its pointed front looking like a ship cresting the wave of a dead sea. It slowly came to a halt beside the barge, and the small hooded scavengers climbed out and began salvaging for parts. Picking through the refuse, and the bodies, they hauled anything they could back to their vehicle, shouting at each other in their high pitched language as they did.

Boba suddenly found rejuvenation, and started crawling towards them. His arms were agony, but he took it slowly; even with the destruction of the barge, he knew that Jabba would have had riches on the skiff beyond the wildest dreams of these Jawa. They would be here for a long time yet. If he could sneak on board...

One of them spotted him, and with a cry he was soon surrounded. In his state the sight of the tiny creatures pointing weapons at him made him snort with laughter, which was excruciating.

"Hey-" he managed to get out, before one of the Jawa's fired.

Boba was engulfed in a bright blue electrical discharge, and convulsed briefly and painfully.

Figures... he thought, as he gratefully slipped into the darkness. It was better than being on that damned desert planet anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> Part of a long and neverending series rewrite that I've been constantly tinkering with over the years. Felt some of this was finally good enough to put up somewhere.


End file.
